Former President Donald Trump on Monday called bitcoin currency "a scam" that threatens the U.S. dollar becoming "the currency of the world."
"Bitcoin just seems like a scam," Trump said on Fox Business Channel. "With us, it was $6,000 and much lower. I don't like it because it's another currency competing against the dollar. Essentially, it’s a currency competing against a dollar. I want the dollar to be the currency of the world. That’s what I've always said."
Earlier in the interview, Trump referred to bitcoin as "another beauty."
"The currency of this world should be the dollar, and I don’t think we should have all of the bitcoins of the world out there," he said. "I think they should regulate them very, very high, but the currency should be the dollar. And when you have things like that out there, you know what happens is, you really lose something — it takes the edge off of the dollar and the importance of the dollar."
In 2019, then-President Trump blasted bitcoin and cryptocurrency during a tweet thread. The Block reported Trump took aim at Facebook and Libra, now known as Diem, the long-delayed stable-coin project that drew the ire of regulators and lawmakers in the U.S.
On Monday, Trump also was asked about Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other international finance ministers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development agreeing to a global corporate minimum tax rate.
"I have a lot of respect for [Yellen], by the way, but we were doing things that were incredible," Trump said. "We would never allow that to happen, because that is happening to our companies.
"We should be taxing our companies but [foreign countries] shouldn’t."
Trump was asked if he were investing currently in the stock market, where the Dow Jones Averages were above 34,500.
"I have not invested in the stock market at this moment," Trump said. "I have in the past, I have not at this moment. I think it's high."
Trump reiterated his stance that China should pay $10 trillion in reparations or a 100% tariff on its goods coming into the U.S., if origins of COVID-19 are proven to have come from a lab in Wuhan.
"I said it came from the lab a year ago, and the 'fake news media' and the Big Tech shut me down for saying that," Trump said. "There’s no question in my mind that it came from the lab. Follow the evidence, follow the bodies.
"Whether it's on purpose or not, it's the single greatest attack on the world, not just us, on the world in history, and they have to pay, They could not afford to pay what it actually cost, if you want to know the truth. They can't afford to pay for the type of damage we’re talking about it."
In a statement last Thursday, Trump demanded China pay the United States $10 trillion for ''the death and destruction they have caused.''
He also blasted Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and White House medical advisor, for early misinformation on the coronavirus pandemic questions.
According to emails, Fauci was aware in January of last year that some features of the coronavirus "(potentially) look engineered" and suggested the Wuhan lab leak theory may have had some legitimacy.
''The correspondence between Dr. Fauci and China speaks too loudly for anyone to ignore,” Trump said. "China should pay Ten Trillion Dollars to America, and the World, for the death and destruction they have caused!''
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